Deterministic session state management within a global cache array

Abstract

The present invention is directed to binding a user session in an application to a particular coordination point. The method includes recognizing a defined application session in response to an application generated by a cache. A user session and an origin server that generated the response are bound in a session cookie. Subsequent requests are routed to the same origin server that served the application content for each unique user session based on the session cookie.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention generally relates to webcaches, and in particular to maintenance and management of web content. [0003] 2. Brief Description of Related Developments [0004] Computers have become an integral tool used in a wide variety of different applications, such as in finance and commercial transactions, three-dimensional and real-time graphics, computer-aided design and manufacturing, healthcare, telecommunications, education, etc. Computers are finding new applications as their performance and speeds ever increase while costs decrease due to advances in hardware technology and rapid software development. Furthermore, a computer system's functionality and usefulness can be dramatically enhanced by coupling stand-alone computers together to form a computer network. In a computer network, users may readily exchange files, share information stored on a common database, pool resources, communicate via e-mail an...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention is about binding a user session in an application to a specific point in the system. This is done by recognizing the user session and binding it to an origin server that generated the application content. The server then sends a session cookie to the cache, which identifies the origin server and application session. When a non-cached request is made, the server sends the cookie to the cache, which then sends the request to the origin server without creating a new session. This helps maintain session information without establishing a new session. Additionally, the invention also allows for binding a user session to a specific point in the system for future requests, which improves efficiency and reduces latency.

Problems solved by technology

However, accessing this data can take a relatively long time due to the electro-mechanical nature of hard disk drives.

Hence, having to perform numerous disk I / O operations acts as a bottleneck in the flow of data.

As a result, it drastically slows down the overall performance of the computer system.

But since cache memory is volatile, most of the data is stored in the disk array.

Furthermore, cache memory costs more than an equivalent amount of hard disk storage.

Hence, there is only a limited amount of data which can be retained in the cache at any given time.

When the cache is placed in the request path between the browser and the web-server there are potential single points of failure.

With the failure of the cache, all cache content in memory is lost.

Additional complications can be realized when configuring any of these systems in a hierarchy.

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